Population alarmism stinks

Catholic Herald, 9 March 2017

A lot of lessons can be learnt about population control from horse manure

Horsesh–. That’s what came to mind when reading reports of the recent meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (Pass), convened to discuss “biological extinction” last week. It’s not that the learned scholars were talking horse dung, but that they weren’t.

The Pass has, since its founding in 1994, been charged with surveying the scholarship on contemporary topics in order to be of use to the Church’s pastors and theologians in the application of the principles of Catholic social teaching. In recent years, it has taken a turn towards publicity seeking, as when it invited Evo Morales of Bolivia and American senator Bernie Sanders last year to discuss the 25th anniversary of Centesimus Annus.

This year’s gambit was to invite the completely discredited Paul Ehrlich, the grandfather – if one might use that natalist term – of coercive population control, presumably to show broadmindedness by inviting the Church’s enemies and to generate notoriety by gratuitously sticking a finger in the eye of the Church’s pro-life witnesses.